Its been a long while...but I'm back...

Can you BELIEVE it??!?! Neither can I. My blog is up and running....again. Whew. Its been a while. Like, we've moved, lived in our house for two years, Rhi Rhi is THREE years old, and I have had another baby all since my last post. What the?! Yup. Life has been busy. But OH so wonderful. And oh so rewarding. God is so great...to say the least. So in a "nutshell" I am going to say my blog is taking a new turn. Here are some subjects I will be posting on. You can take it or leave it. Fine by me either way. Because if I can help someone who is looking for answers of some sort. Or a story that can help them in their situation it is totally worth it. Here are some new subjects I will be posting about: Baby Wise, Big Families, Natural Childbirth, Adoption, Recipes, Kids. Stay Tuned. Don't go far. I will be back. *Moo's(read the side panel for who Moo is) first baseball game is tonight. Woo hoo! Go Rangers!!!!

A new Home to live

Hey Everyone!

My Mother in law, Lynn, asked me to put pictures on my blog of the progress of our house that we are building. I looked back at the pictures I posted before and the front doesn't look much different. However, the inside is coming a long quite quickly. Just this week they hung all of our cabinets, sprayed our walls(all walls here in Austin are textured), put up our banister and rails, and hung our wooden mantel over the fire place. The wood is not stained yet. We are not sure what the next step is. I think they might start bricking the house. Our house on the outside has every kind of texture possible. Brick, Stone, siding, and stucco. That is how it is done here in Texas! :) We are so so so excited! We will be moving in with my parents in 3 weeks. We have been told we will be living in our house in Feb. Now, whether that is at the end of February or mid February we do not know yet. We feel so blessed! We cannot wait to finally be settled and live somewhere for a long time! God is so good and never ceases to amaze us!

Did you know?

Did you know that we are building a house? Yup. We are so excited! And we feel so very blessed. We have rented since we moved here almost 4 years ago. We are more than ready to have a house of our own. However, we are very grateful to God for all He has done. It is because of Him that this is even happening...without a doubt. Never ever do we want anyone to think otherwise. Anyways...last Monday(not yesterday) there was just the foundation. This week our house will have windows and a roof! It will be done the last week of February.

Side view


Side view


Front view

Front view

Our Daddy is STRONG!

We are SO proud of Derek. He ran a 1/2 marathon a few weeks back. It was the marathon for adoption. He ran it with my brother in law, sister, and 2 of our friends. They have been training for a while for this. I was going to run it but twisted my knee at mile 6. I had to opt out. :( I am SO proud of Derek and his determination. The boys were so proud of their Daddy. Parker kept saying he was going to cheer really loud for Derek so he would win. So sweet!

Whats Up, Whats Down, Whats All Around

Here's our life in pictures the last month or so. :)

Meet my BEAUTIFUL niece, Ella. My sister and brother in law are adopting her from Haiti in 6-12 months. She is officially their daughter(and she officially has 4 blonde haired older brothers! Ha!). Whats even greater is that she is only 2 days younger than Ann Marie!!! Ann Marie doesn't even know it but her best friend will be here soon enough.


This is HUGE! Our church, Free Chapel, has joined another new church plant in Lakeway because we have the SAME vision! Our new church is called The Church at Lake Travis. It's awesome and such a blessing! Here is Jeremy preaching on the first Sunday. We are loving church!

We believe in being a missional community. We want to love our neighbors and reach our neighbors for Christ. The only way you can do that is to get to know your neighbors. This is our new neighborhood where my parents already live. We had a sidewalk meet and greet. Knowing NO ONE, 42 people came!!! Can't wait to live there!:)

Happy Thanksgiving! We cannot wait for Mama Lynn, Papa K, Aunt Lindsey and Uncle Matt to get here. We are going to make some great memories. :)

This sweet girl is so fun! She is crawling everywhere, pulling up and standing, and sometimes stands by herself for not very long. She has 3 teeth(2 bottom, 1 top). She LOVES to eat. She smiles at me every time I look her way. She nurses about 3 times a day...sometimes 4. We love having this baby girl to break up some of the boy stuff going on around here(fighting, wrestling, baseball, football, etc.).

We have been cheering on the Tide all the way from Austin, TX.

We have been having a small group at our house every other Friday night. We are reading the book "Power of a Praying Parent". We have desserts and discussion while the kids play. We have loved it!

Go Dawgs!! We, also, have been supporting Daddy's team, University of Georgia. We are especially happy they creamed Auburn. ;)

We joined a farmers market here where we get a basket of fresh veggies every week. This is our basket. It is so yummy! And keeps us healthy(well Derek and I, but my kids won't even look at veggies for the most part...ugh.).

This cute kid goes to preschool 3 days a week. He has LOVED it and cannot wait to start kindergarten. I have really liked it because it forces me to have a plan those days. Its been nice. Parker's teachers are so great. God is so good!

We have been hanging out with cousins. Parker always says his cousins are "his cousins and his best friends". And they are!

Now that the weather is cooler my boys have been playing on their playscape in the backyard a lot. We are giving away our playscape when we move but then we are going to buy the kids a nicer one later. They love it way too much to just get rid of it and never get another one.

Happy 9 months sweet baby girl!

This SWEET baby girl turned 9 months old yesterday. She is sweet as can be. She gets LOTS of love around here. So here is what is going on with little Miss Ann Marie. :)
-She started to officially crawl around 8 months old.
-She is just now cutting her first tooth. I can see it but it hasn't officially come through yet.
-She eats pretty much table food all of the time. I feed her a jar of baby food every other day just so she can get some veggies.
-She is not loud at all. She babbles and will say "Dada" not knowing what she is saying. But she isn't super chatty yet.
-She smiles at me every time I catch her eye.
-She is in the 30% for weight and height.
-She still nurses 4 times a day.
-She still takes 3 naps a day.
-She sleeps all night...from about 7:30pm-7:00am.
-She is now pulling up on everything. We have to lower her crib bc she has just started doing this in her crib.
-She loves crawling into the kitchen and playroom in our house.
-She LOVES her brothers!
-She has just started getting a few boo boos bc of falling from trying to stand up. Makes me :(
-Mommy can get some good laughs out of her.
-She still does not know there is a bow in her hair every day. Not once has she tried to take them out. I hope she never tries to take them out! :)
-She drinks out of a sippy cup but doesn't hold it herself yet.
-She is wearing 6-9 month or 9 month clothes.
-Every time you give her her lovie(pink floppy eared bunny) she sticks her two fingers in her mouth and lays her head on my shoulder. SO precious!

Ok, that is a lot of info about sweet Rhi Rhi. We love this baby girl so much...I can't even express it. We KNOW God has his hand of protection, blessings, and favor on her.

Happy 9 months baby girl!!!! We LOVE you!

Parker Man

I don't feel like I have blogged about our first born in a long time. He is the reason we started this blog a little less than 4 and 1/2 years ago. :) But the more kids we add the harder it is to keep up and write about each one individually. This little boy's personality is not what we would have imagined when he was 1 or even 2. ha! Has that ever happened to anyone else? We used to pray and be a little worried that Parker would be too passive and shy...and lack confidence. Well, let me tell you that is NOT the case. Now we are trying to figure out how to teach him to NOT be a "know it all" and be bossy and play fight all of the time. :) I will say, I would rather it be this way than the other.
Parker is full of energy, very chatty, joyful, LOVES his cousins(he says they are his cousins and best friends), loves to wrestle with anyone who will wrestle back(sometimes even if they don't wrestle back), eager to learn, loves to be the leader, gets super excited about things(that comes from me! ha!), would drink some sort of beverage(water, juice box, soda, tea) all day if I let him, REALLY likes treats of any sort, LOVES toys, dress up is a favorite, can hardly wait to go to class at church, loves his Papa K and Mama Lynn and Mama Don and Papa, talks about his Aunts more than his uncles(sorry guys), such a big helper around the house, STILL doesn't love to go poop in the potty(he does...but it isn't always easy...grrr!), has two front gray teeth(from hitting them at completely different times), is so ready for preschool to start(this is his first time going), loves to watch his shows in the mornings, really really LOVES his daddy, is super close to his brother, wants to talk and be right up in his sister's face all of the time(drives me bananas, but AM doesn't mind a bit!), is such a good big brother, doesn't take naps but I can get him to if I want him to, has a good heart, is good about sharing(most of the time), a great swimmer, good at playing t-ball, and he just loves life.
There ya go!!! I could think of a gazillion other things to say about this little guy but I will end on that note because I wouldn't stop. Parker is our first born which means a few things: it means that we are constantly learning with him on how to parent, it means that he is better at obeying than his brother is because I think we are more laxed w/Micah because we have other's to tend to(not a good thing on our part), and it means that he is our little helper. Honestly, the 4's have been great. We definitely have our moments but to me he has the perfect little personality for an older sibling and our firstborn. We love him so so so much!!! Even tho there are days where I do feel like I am constantly getting on to him I hope and pray that I take time to love on him so he always knows how special he is to us. :)

Btw: he had his 4yo shots last week. Poor guy...he was excited. Yeah, he didn't remember that shots hurt. I tried tell him but he didn't believe me. And he had to get 4!!! He was trooper and was fine almost right after they were done. He is in the 75% for height and weight. As we were leaving the office he said "Am I going to school right now?!" He thought bc he got his shots right then he could go to school that minute. :)

Family Vacation 2011

A couple of weeks ago we went to Fernandina Beach, FL for vacation with Derek's family. When I say family, I mean the whole Mills' side of his family. We went last year also. We fly into Jacksonville, and it is about 25 minutes from there. We really had a great time! We stayed in a condo w/Derek's parents on the beach. I am not joking when I say the first day we got there the temperature was about 20 degrees cooler than it was in Austin! It felt amazing the whole time we were there! The kids did good on the flights for the most part and all in all...it was a successful, relaxing, much needed vacation. We didn't want to come home...but had no choice.











This picture was taken on the plane. I cannot believe this happened but on the way back from the beach we left soooo early in the morning(4am..flight at 6am). At one point all of my kids plus Derek were asleep. All.at.the.same.time. For a little over an hour!!! Wow! It was great! I never expected that! I know it was all because of God!

Dress up Like a Cow Day

We decided to dress up like a cow and get a free combo meal at Chickfila. It is fun for my kids and we all get free meals! My sister, brother-in-law, and two her boys joined in on the fun too. We had fun!

Aunt Lindsey got married!!! :)

Derek's sister, Lindsey Mills(yes...that was her name...needless to say we have lots of the same friend requests bc people think we are the other one) got married at the end of May. Derek, me, and Parker were all in the wedding. It was a great weekend! My kids did amazing! All of them were up super late two nights in a row and they did so good. The wedding was seriously so beautiful! It was at Matt's parents house. They did a great job of getting their house/land ready for the grand event. I wish I had pictures of the reception. It was behind the house around the pool. It was so cool! We were able to show off Ann Marie(Only Derek's parents and 1 set of grandparents had met her). We had a blast! We Love Matt, Lindsey's husband. They have been together(for the most part...ha) since Lindsey was 16. My boys love Uncle Matt too! *On vacation Matt kept getting Micah to say "I love Uncle Matt!" It was so cute!*

Lindsey and Matt, if you are reading this your nephews and niece are ready for some cousins to play with over there. So, get on it! ;)